Narcissiste

A designer friend and I were talking about her latest rash of clients. She says they are singularly difficult to deal with and she wasn't sure why. In some cases, they had been badly burned by previous contractors (losing $140K which goes to show you how much money these people are pouring into their homes, but I digress). In other cases, they were bitten by the DIY bug -- even cardiologists with insanely busy practices thought they could take on the role of contractor to save some money. That's like a contractor saying he's going to operate on himself when he develops heart disease. The other reason is that this is a narcissistic culture, and one of the defining symptoms of narcissism is to think the latest thing is the greatest. (Look at the love affair with Obama, and how they're slamming the poor guy now in spite of some very real and positive moves; look at the landslide with Ford, and one can only hope Toronto will wake up without a hangover on that decision... but I digress again). So back to the clients -- they fall madly in love with this designer or that, they must have that new kitchen no matter what, it's the only thing that will make them happy (narcissists also seem to be addicted to the new thing to relieve their deep seated unhappiness). But when the new begins to demonstrate it or they have feet of clay, they quickly get dashed to the ground, demonized for having failed the unrealistically high expectations.

When one part of any relationship -- between client and contractor, people and president, man and woman -- has these narcissistic expectations that the other will solve ALL their problems, it's doomed. In the case of the cardiologist cum contractor, my friend decided to walk away. Trust your gut, walk away.

A Question of Support

I've met with a variety of sometimes surprising responses when I tell people that my ex-h has to pay spousal support. They range from well shouldn't you just go out and work to revenge scenarios like taking him for all he's worth. First of all, I am working, I just don't pull down a huge salary. And secondly, I've never been a gouger, and revenge only backfires on the perpetrator.

So here's the scoop on spousal support:
1) women post-divorce experience a 50% decline in living standards within 5 years; while men, post divorce, experience a 50% increase.
2) within five years, 75% of men are remarried, while 75% of women are not.
3) 90% of children living in poverty are living with single mothers.

Those are the reasons why the laws have changed so that women don't need to live in poverty.

I've proposed waiving spousal in exchange for his equity in the house. (He won't be left penniless either since he gets all the retirement funds.) This provides me with the security of a home for me and my children.

More research (acquired by me):

Once men remarry, they cleave to the new woman, and HER children, often leaving his own children out in terms of time, energy, and MONEY. In fact, more often than not, when a man dies, he leaves his estate to his new wife, and her children, and leaves his own children little or nothing. (I personally know of four instances of this, and my lawyer says he's seen plenty of cases that support this.)

And finally, since splitting, his ardour toward having the children has cooled a little, passing up offers of taking them here, or there, or visiting in the middle of summer camp... And so the bulk of t he child care rests on my shoulders. Not that I mind. In fact, I often sit up in the middle of it all, dishes, laundry, signing school forms, overseeing homework, and realize: I got the best deal!!!! But it does leave me with more of the workload.

That said, I realize plenty of men are impoverished paying spousal to an ex who won't work. And plenty of men (usually the ones who didn't walk away) are more than eager to have their kids as much as possible.

So my question is:
is spousal support fair?

My Life as Story...

Was something Peter Kreeft said in a seminar for Act One's workshop a year or two ago in Hollywood. (Act One is a screenwriting program to turn Christian keeners, intent on saving Hollywood, into excellent writers. And Peter Kreeft is a preeminent Catholic thinker who's written about 50 books, and has his feet planted firmly on the ground.)

He said that if we think of our life as story, and understand that like all characters we have the power to resist good and embrace evil, just as much as the other way around, then we will also understand that we can only be overcome by a beauty more powerful than our choice of evil. Looking at our lives as such, also makes for less remorse over lost years, regarding them as part of the narrative arc in a journey, as long as that journey is gradually inching towards good. It allows me to see (sometimes, at least, when I'm not overcome by anger and resentment), that the things that have happened to me over the past 12 years, have also opened me up to God's grace in a way that being sheltered probably could not have. By looking at our lives as story, we are also able to see truth, because it lies there in the concrete. And goodness, he says, depends on truth -- that is, without being truthful, we can never really be good. That's why some beautiful movies can never be good, because they don't impart truth, and also why some primitive movies are good because they do. And it lies in the story, not in the costumes, sets, and special effects, though sometimes excellent goodness is seen through those things too. As flawed as Mel Gibson's personal life is, and as much as it's not always a witness for Christ, his movie The Passion of the Christ, affected people -- Christians and atheists and Jews and Muslims -- in a profound way that has led many to truth.

Another thing Kreeft said that struck home was the need to "exchange efficiency for delight." Joy is something I have either avoided, or it's avoided me, until the past few years when I have recognized the need, actually the desire, for joy.

Oh, what a ride!

I've said for a long time that anger is a verygood tool for protecting your inner mushball, and that sadness while it taps into your real emotions can leave you a mess until you work through it. The last week or so has been like this.

And I've had too much contact with my ex-h. Better left alone. Since he had a potentially serious medical problem which needed attending to, I insisted on driving him to the hospital, then driving him to another hospital next day for the emerg laser eye surgery. When I accidentally hit a bump in the car, he asked that I slow down since my driving could hurt his eye. I got defensive, because I had been very mindful, and then the memories surfaced -- having a miscarriage all over the kitchen, and his asking if I needed a ride to the hospital. D'oh. Half hour from delivery of our dd, (while he was engaged in a full blown affair, and being so nasty I'd asked a friend to be my labour coach, then relented, but I digress). There I was, 9 cm dilated in screaming labour, and he accidentally bangs the wheelchair into the wall driving the pain through my whole body. Naturally, I cried out -- he got angry with me.

So as I drive along -- him in the back seat with our dd, and me in the front like the chauffeur I allow myself to be -- and start thinking about all those affairs, and his mean behaviour towards me during them. While I understand, intellectually, that demonizing me justifies or normalizes behaviour, he doesn't want to feel guilty about. And I understand too that I contributed to this by being so effing stupid as to put up with it (what was I thinking? Saving my children's home?) and worse to fall for his mood switches from nasty to sweet -- when I'd start to exhibit signs of kicking him out. Maybe that's why these romantic comedies appeal so much, because they take a Proverbial statement and flesh it out -- those lines ring true, because they are true. My marriage is a combination of Legally Blonde and Jerry Macguire -- only I'm like a pathetic Elle still stuck on Warner.

And when I got home, feeling pretty low, out of the blue appear my two dearest friends (via email and phone), as if by divine conjuring, and made me feel loved again. Cuz it's being unwanted that really hits you most in times of sadness (most other times I feel very content about the turn of events, at least with regards to me). The other thing to watch out for is when one or both of the kids is away -- my tall lanky and handsome son has been at camp for over a week, and that probably accounts for the mood more than anything. I will, with the help of good friends and my faithful Lord, rise again.

Keep on moving, look forward and see what the good Lord has in store for me. After all, he promises to restore the years that the locusts have stolen. But I won't know them if my head is down.

Sadness Trumps Anger

This process -- some call it grief -- is funny in the way it rears up at times. Last night's healing prayer service for our minister's wife opened some floodgates. Usually I am in good spirits, moving forward, and basically dismissing my husband from thought. But during times of intense prayer, when more barriers are lowered, the sadness seeps in, and so the tears begin. For the past several months, I have recognized that anger allows you to function, by keeping the grief at bay, but the sadness is necessary for dipping into the grief and then moving on from it. If that makes any sense.

Separation (from food) anxiety

OK, everyone knows that church dinners aren't always the height of culinary arts. Often macaroni and cheese, or a pasta salad, or spaghetti bolognese (you get the idea), but the whole point of these things is to be hospitable and break bread together (and pasta is not far removed from bread). So when my sister expressed her displeasure at heading to Alpha for the dinner portion, because of her "sensitive" stomach, I knew it was because the fare wasn't up to snuff.

It reminds me of something Adrian Plass said once on tour in Toronto, about church social gatherings -- they are testament to our fortitude towards others' eccentricities. So perhaps I should take that advice and stop judging the finicky sister, and accept that she is so, and doesn't want another mac and cheese dinner.

On another albeit similar note, I saw the ex in a tee shirt today, and ohboy he's put on weight. I guess Mrs Paradise is feeding him well. I do recall reading a note from her saying she enjoyed preparing gourmet meals (I just didn't realize at the time that it applied to him!).

Marriage is not a Mirror Image

I was talking to a gay man I know, and told him about my marriage breakdown. He asked if I was lonely, and I said no -- more angry, hurt, betrayed and feeling blamed for something that was way out of my control.

He asked if I didn't think monogamy was impossible, and that we were not meant to have the same mate for ever. I said that I thought marriage is where you meet yourself (for better or worse). He asked if that meant mirror image, and I said actually the opposite -- it's where you meet the Other, and in that other ness you are able to see yourself, flaws, strengths, everything, if you're aware of or open to seeing that.

Mirror images are essentially narcissistic because you're hoping to see a positive reflection of yourself. One reason, I guess why my husband consistently falls in love with his ethnic mirror image, hoping to find himself. Ironically when he was younger, he fled that cultural mirror image, rejecting it. The wrestling, as I explained to my friend, was in the complement, to see where and how you can fit -- not as in hand and glove but as in wrestling with another, fully individual person with separate desires, will, goals, and so on. Teenagers mature when they have to cut their teeth against someone they disagree with, although that someone also needs to be in loving relationship with them. Otherwise, they walk away. When you rub up against someone not entirely like yourself, but someone who also has the will (in spite of that lack) to see it through to the end with you, you work out your own personality, see where you are succeeding, failing, where you are strong and weak, where you are culpable and not.

Barring abuse of any kind, marriage breakdown is a failure of will. It is easier to find something new and potentially more exciting. It requires strength to face our own weaknesses and failures because it takes guts to be accountable and take responsibility for things we may have done to hurt. No mirror image can erase the fact that behind that mirror lies an other human being, complete with their own will, which inevitably will depart from your path at some point. What makes marriages last is the willingness to banish fear of being alone, and to wait patiently until those two paths converge again.

Death of a Good Man

That 1960s song “what’s it all about?” plays in my mind occasionally as I think – endlessly, it seems – about this event, or series of events really.

It’s been a week since David Dewees, the Jarvis Collegiate teacher who committed suicide after being arrest on charges of luring, and invitation to touch. He was my son’s section head at Pioneer Camp this past summer.
Aidan, 16, revered David. Such a great guy, a good man, so much fun, the most amazing Bible study leader, a gifted teacher so inspiring that Aidan has started to consider that vocation -- the kudos seemed endless.

The whole affair has taken on huge moral proportions – great men sin (and women) – and where do we find God in it, and where do we find right judgment in it. I bring up the idea of moral dilemma in trying to find ways to discuss this tragic thing to Aidan. The truth must out and yet is the whole truth may be lost to us forever with David’s death. We must protect our children, yes. But what of the hundreds of children whose lives were touched, positively, and changed forever on account of his example? And what of those who will never benefit from his probing questions, his exuberance, his musical genius, his deep and abiding love of Christ? Is David’s life now completely discounted because of his suicide, and even more by what led to it?

We heard things that make for unclear judgments, moral ambiguities, which we aim to examine in both the stark light of God’s truth and the compassion of Christ’s grace. Aidan understands that one must judge another on how he presents himself to us, and not on what others may say. But he and his friends talk and some of them are deeply hurt: “I thought I knew him,” said one. “How could he do this,” cries another.

Aidan has thought about this, and concludes that he can forgive David for being something other than what he may have thought he was. Nobody is two-dimensional, we all have dark sides – witness great King David, who loved God mightily and yet arranged another man’s murder so he could steal his wife.

Aidan doesn’t really understand what made Yukon (Dewees’ camp name) take his own life, but I can imagine: despair, shame, humiliation and the weakness we all suffer from – disbelief that God could possibly bring any good out of this mess.

A Darwin by any other Name...

...is still the same.

Ah, yes, dear old Darwin. We keep coming smack up to him. When most scientists have long since given him the boot and moved on to more sophisticated methods of understanding evolving species, the Darwinists and neo-Darwinists are still kicking his can.

Is it possible they are doing this out of a defensive reaction to the Creationists and their loud fanfare? Or as a reaction, albeit a tenuous one, to Bush and his evangelical coterie? As I said to my dear atheist, Bush-hating husband the other day, whatever will you have to complain about come November?

Anyway, I digress. There's a new movie out called Expelled, which I read not such good reviews about. Do I send my 15-year-old to see it without vetting it? Bad movies only make bad impressions even if the intent is good. And he's pretty mature about movie quality (and hates to be reminded of his love of Barney only 9 short years ago.)

I see that Louisiana has effected a bill that the left claims undercuts the teaching of evolution, while those who proposed adding creationist/intelligent design in addition to evolution sounds pretty reasonable to me. It's not as though they're removing evolution from the curriculum. I don't really quite understand their fears -- seeing as ID promotes evolving species, just not in as simplistic a manner as the Darwinists, but also sees it with a guiding hand.

Usually, people dig in their heels for two reasons, or one really: they feel insecure in their position. So either, they worry that the future holds only a nightmare of right-wing evangelical thought control, or they worry that ID will legitimately erode the non-theistic Darwin theory, (neo or otherwise).

While I champion the rights of people to ensure their children get taught the way they want them to, (and personally I am a proponent of ID because I think it's the only reasonable choice between evolution which has the scientific evidence on its side, and creation which has a deep understanding of how God operates with the world He loves), I also worry that the approach taken is accomplishing little, and possibly creating a large wake of unreparable damage.

More on Oddballs

Feeling a little ashamed of my not-so-secret desires to keep away from my crazy niece, especially after seeing the movie Elf. For those not in the know, Will Farrell plays a 30-year-old elf who doesn't realize he's a person and has acquired very strange (elf) habits, like eating only candy. He visits his people family -- the father who left his mom and him behind 30 years before, the new step-mom, the 12-year-old half-brother. Everyone is very much bothered by Elf when he first arrives. He's weird, he doesn't fit in, he does strange things, he breaks stuff. But he is fun, and all he wants is to be loved by his dad, and his extended family. I was almost more worried about having her stay with me in case she let the dog out. Better that she sleep on the street than the dog does, right?

That said, my niece is 37 years old and she has lived on her own for the past 18 years, shuffling back and forth between rooming houses, seedy apartments, Vancouver, San Fran, Quebec City, and so on.

She won't take any help, institutional or psychiatric, because she doesn't think there's anything wrong with her. Maybe in a way she's right. She takes her welfare check and either spends it on second hand clothes, drugs, or gives money away to others. She pats children on the head and tells them they're beautiful. (Kids, interestingly enough, like her.) She says the police are brutes, which may be true, and that psychiatrists are sick and often alcoholic (also possibly true).